The main claim to fame of [b]Koumajou Remilia[/b] aka "Touhouvania", long before it was even thought that it would get on Steam (the original version is from 2009), are the superb character designs: "What if Ayami Kojima designed the [b]Touhou[/b] cast?" So many years later, those alternate designs of Reimu, Marisa & co. still rock. Funnily enough, before Frontier Aja themselves gave a translation through a patch back then, it was thought to be possibly darker than the source material but once confronted with the actual dialogue, it's not the case. Even Remilia's doomsday plan is resolved with a slap on the wrist.
When it comes to the actual game, however, there is much less to be enthusiastic about. It feels like the developers, wanting to mix [b]Touhou[/b] with classic [b]Castlevania[/b], didn't have a clear idea of how to do it, resulting in a superficial implementation of aspects from both franchises. Therefore you got Reimu who has very floaty jumps and whose flying, while useful at times, isn't exactly great to control as she can't even change the direction she faces during flight, on top of allowing to easily skip many obstacles. The level design is bland, with several rooms that are copy-pasted, especially visible in the arena level. Enemies are simply [b]Castlevania[/b] classics with a few fairies mixed in. And worst of all, boss fights have [i]danmaku[/i] with a gameplay not built for them. You have to count on the slide and dodge maneuvers and even so, the bullet volleys in such restricted boss arenas are so hard to dodge, they can easily force to tank some damage.
Music is great, including some almost "obvious" remixes of classic [b]Castlevania[/b] tracks, and the dub added in this version is excellent, after all it's veterans like Miyuki Sawashiro, and all the VAs that worked on the sequel back in the day are back here, with the addition of Aoi Yuki as Cirno doesn't appear there.
The graphics suffer from a zoomed-in view (it's like they were originally conceived to have a larger view and smaller sprites), it looks heavily pixelated, blurry and cramped, which also negatively affects gameplay - sometimes the flight is necessary to avoid certain leaps of faith. Reimu's animation is excellent but I can't shake the impression it's outright traced from Alucard in [b]Symphony of the Night[/b], as are some enemies like the minotaurs. I liked a few inserts of 3D in the mostly 2D graphics (like at the entrance of the castle), which reminds me of the earlier 2.5D games of the 32-bit era.
In the end, [b]Koumajou Densetsu[/b] is little more than a curiosity, and its base price really too much for what it offers. At least the sequel improves most of what went wrong here.
